Vultee Vengeances.
682al, Greetings
Many thanks for your research and the photos - they're among the best I've seen of this particular cockpit.
For it's our old pal again, the Camden aircraft, the aircraft cockpit sketched in Peter Scott's "Vengeance"; this is not a Mk. I, II, or III and never was !
I flew 400 hrs in these airframe numbers: AN, AP, EZ, FB and FD series over a period of over two years (FB and FD are Mk. IIIs). The cockpits in all the first three marks are practically identical; this is utterly different. It must be a Mk. IV. (We would have done better to call it a different name, as the US did - an A-35 to distinguish it from their A-31).
None of the earlier marks had a P8 compass, our ringsight was a fixed thing planted centrally, we had no reflector sight, there was certainly no cockpit heater - I could go on and on. And there is the curious business of the extra ball. First: I stand to be corrected, has anyone ever seen two balls on an instrument panel? Why? - if there's one bit of kit which cannot go u/s, it's the ball in the needle-and-ball instrument. Why on earth duplicate it?
The AP's text matches the panel, that part's correct enough. But it ain't a Vengeance Mk. I. How that mistake got into an official publication, I don't know and cannot guess. (And why would an AP be needed for a Mk. I, anyway, when the RAF (and RN) only used Mk. IVs for their target tugs?
I stand by my opinion in Post #2890. But thanks all the same for all the trouble you've taken over this.
"Curiouser and curiouser", said Alice,
Goodnight,
Danny42C.